The appearance of the Minorites was no less humble than their buildings. Their habits of coarse gray or brown cloth[17], tied round the waist with a cord, often worn and patched, as Grostete loved to see them, hardly[18] distinguished them from ‘simple rustics[19].’ In the convent at Oxford, pillows were forbidden, and the use of shoes was permitted only to the infirm or old, and that by special licence[20]. We hear of two of the brethren returning from a chapter held at Oxford at Christmas time singing as they ‘picked their way along the rugged path over the frozen mud and rigid snow, whilst the blood lay in the track of their naked feet, without their being conscious of it[21].’ Even from the robbers and murderers who infested the woods near Oxford the Barefoot Friars were safe[22]. ‘Three things,’ said Friar Albert, Minister General, ‘tended to the exaltation of the Order,--bare feet, coarse garments, and the rejecting of money[23]’; and the Oxford Franciscans were as zealous in the last respect as in the other two. The Archdeacon of Northampton sent a bag of money to Friar Adam Marsh, and when the latter refused it, the messenger threw it down in the cell and left it:-- ‘Wherefore,’ writes Adam to the Archdeacon, ‘the bearer of these presents has at the instance of the brethren taken the said money, just as it was, sealed with your seal, to your lordship, to dispose of according to your pleasure[24].’ The evidence of the Public Records, containing scattered notices of grants from the Crown, is striking on this point, and the poverty of these early Franciscans can hardly be better illustrated than by the means taken to relieve it. During the long reign of Henry III, the Patent, Close, and Liberate Rolls contain only three grants of money to the house of the Minorites at Oxford, and all of them are due to exceptional circumstances. They are, ten marks for the support of a provincial chapter in 1238, 60_s._ for their houses in 1245 in lieu of six oaks which the king had before given them, and three marks for the fabric of their church in 1246[25]. The alms to the house at Oxford are almost wholly in kind, and consist chiefly of supplies of firewood from the royal forests round Oxford. The earliest recorded instance of royal bounty was a grant of thirteen oaks in ‘Brehull’ (Brill) forest for fuel on the 9th Jan. 1231[26]. A few years later they received fifteen cartloads of brushwood from Shotover forest[27], and in 1237 fifteen oaks in Wychwood Forest ‘to make charcoal[28].’ Similar notices occur almost every year--sometimes twice a year--throughout the reign of Henry III[29]. In 1240 the keepers of the wines at Southampton were ordered to deliver one cask of Gascon wine, of the king’s bounty, to the Friars Minors at Oxford ‘to celebrate masses[30].’ In 1248 the Sheriff of Oxford received orders to